Robert Stanley has been exhibiting art in the Chicago area since 1973. He has also been juried into national and international shows. His works evoke a disjointed world, yet connections between objects suggest serene mystery in the chaos of life.

Although born in Florida to an Army Air Corps father who liked to draw and a mother who had won voice competitions, he did not do anything artistic until he became a monk, where arts were introduced to those who were novices in this area also. After several years, he left the monastery, exhibiting in Cincinnati, Ohio, while teaching at the University of Dayton and Earlham College. After receiving his Master’s degree from Pratt Institute in New York, he exhibited around the USA while teaching in Pennsylvania and Illinois.

Living in a wooded area, near a lake, near Chicago, he combines images from these areas with his personal and metaphysical enigmas.

The work seems trivial, elevated by a conjunction of ascendant postmodernism and a branch of feminism. It seems to me that we humans have always known that "raw materials ... can be endlessly refashioned." And, critiqued from a performance art standpoint, Shermans "roles" were not apparently held for any more time than necessary to shoot the photo.

All systems, if brilliant enough and/or related to nature or mathematics look beautiful and "work." Is that enough, if we are wise? I was all charged up by Cybernetic Serendipity. Despite the wonderful and clever results obtained through such systems approach, once the "oooooooh" is gone, if there is no integration with the human condition, the "oooooooooh" is GONE.

Yeh, me too. Very spiffy stuff, but as a critique of society (As though we don't have enough. As though justice and identity aren't the new, boorish, intrusive "Establishment."), the works make no sense. Nor, for me, do they move me in any deep way. Clever guys, though.